There are two kinds of health: 1) The superficial type that the media wants us to achieve. 2) The health that is truly good for our own bodies and lifestyle.

Can you guess which one I support? 🙂

The trouble with our media. We should eat for health, not for reaching some physical “ideal”.

Take a look at any health magazine cover and you will see tag-lines such as “six-pack abs and you eat pasta too!”, “the best diet for losing inches off your waistline!”, or “gluten-free recipes that’ll make your skin glow!”. These words are often coupled with images of a stereo-typically Ken or Barbie doll “healthy” person.

Diet and physical appearance are inextricably linked, this is true, yes. With our optimal diet, we will most definitely look our absolute best.

But what defines our optimal diet and our most beautiful bodies is NOT something to be decided by the media! It doesn’t make sense for us to all be counting calories and eating low-carb in order to look like some version of Jennifer Aniston. That is just not possible, and it is not something to be desired. Why shouldn’t we celebrate our best health and how it looks on our bodies?

It is time we take action and help spread nutrition education and redefine what healthy looks like. The foods we consume have an important impact on our health, but we shouldn’t let the media place a moral value on certain foods. Carbs are not inherently bad, just like kale is not inherently good. Nutrition education is the first step towards selecting the best balance of nutrients for our bodies, and self-love is key towards helping others see that healthy looks different on every body!

It is officially Fall, and I’ve been doing some serious reflecting on where I want to go with Positive Eats. I have talked with other entrepreneurs and met with some amazing individuals about branding and message, and I realized that I want/need to really refine my focus and target audience.

My two main passions are education and health. I am a K-12 teacher (with some experience in higher education) and have encountered students and teachers of all types. Succeeding in education, whether you are on the student side or the teaching side, starts with feeling good about oneself on the inside and outside. I know at the most basic level that this is related to diet and physical appearance.

So here goes…:

Positive Eats is a body-positive food and nutrition community designed to help educators help their students develop a healthy relationship with themselves and what they eat. We provide workshops, speaker events, professional trainings, and a supportive platform for individuals involved in education (teachers, administration, parents) to connect on issues of self-love and healthy food education.

Our vision is to promote and instill lifelong healthy eating habits and body-positive mentalities starting with healthy school children! A happy and healthy life begins with early nutrition education and self-empowerment. Cheers to Positive Eats!

Carbohydrates, simply put, are our body’s main source of energy. We need carbs to function and for our brain to think clearly! Recommended daily allowance is about 130 grams of carbs per day for the “average” person. Check with your doctor or do some research online to figure out a good balance for your body.

My mom recently sent me a care package in the mail. Was it full of homemade cookies and chocolate hearts and love notes? Nah.

Cheez-its. Yep, bags and bags of individual servings of Cheez-its. I don’t even remember the last time I had one of the crispy yellow cheese-crackers. But hey, I took it as a nutritional learning opportunity. So here’s the question…Do Cheez-its actually include real cheese??

We’ve published a few posts on the nutrients in beer, but today we’re going to talk about Beer and Iron. It is estimated that only 65-70 % of Americans get enough iron in their diet, and women (because of menstruation) are particularly prone to low levels of this essential mineral.

A study published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, examined 40 different beers, and found that heavier, darker beers have almost 50% more iron than light beers.

The darker the beer, the more iron!

A pint of Guinness has about 0.3 mg of iron, and the recommended daily intake for the “average” adult is around 10 mg per day…so while beer is not the highest source of iron in the grand scheme of foods, if you’re thinking about this particular nutrient when our drinking with friends, consider getting some of the dark stuff! 😀

Cannolis are a big deal in Boston, and ever since moving here a few months ago, I have been meaning to give them a try. Yesterday I had my first cannoli, and honestly, I was unimpressed. But that is beside the point of this nutrition blog.

For those of you who won’t know, cannolis are a popular Italian dessert, made of a fried pastry dough tube filled with sweetened ricotta cheese. I got mine with chocolate chips as well. Given the ingredient list, my guess is that a cannoli has a good amount of fat (from the deep fried pastry shell and ricotta cheese), carbohydrates (from the added sugars, the flour shell), and protein (from the cheese). Like most desserts, the cannoli a macro-nutrient dense food–perfect for when you need quick energy or a high number of calories before or after lots of physical activity.